Facial recognition startup Viewdle on Wednesday began letting Android smartphone users see which of the people around them are vampires and which are vampire slayers.

A "Third Eye" augmented reality game released by the San Francisco company online at viewdle.com is the first installment in a trilogy that will culminate in a battle between the undead and defenders of the living.

It was also intended as a fun demonstration of a powerful software platform that lets smartphone cameras recognize what they see and potentially support services such as sight for the blind or memories for the forgetful.

"It is true science fiction on some level," Viewdle chief product officer Jason Mitura told AFP. "The way people use their devices to interact with the world is going to change dramatically."

At the heart of the vampire-themed game is Viewdle's facial recognition technology that debuted in April in the form of a SocialCamera application for Android-powered smartphones.

SocialCamera uses computer algorithms to create "faceprints" that people can tag with names and store in smartphones. The software then matches faceprints to subjects in subsequent photos.

Android smartphones can instantly connect names to those in photos and share the images using social networking service Facebook, photo-sharing website Flickr, or by email or instant message.

"Third Eye" uses facial characteristics to evaluate whether people viewed through smartphone cameras are "blood suckers" or humans who can be recruited as vampire slayers.

The objective of the first part of the game is to amass an army and establish alliances for battles between clans that will play out in installments due for release later this year.

"The gaming mechanism forces play that requires people to interact with the real world," Mitura said. "You hold the smartphone up to an object and it triggers game play; in this case the object is a person."

Viewdle has avoided controversy by putting the facial recognition power in smartphones with users keeping control, instead of putting the information on servers in the Internet "cloud."

Viewdle is working with chip and smartphone makers that are building computer vision into their offerings.

Viewdle bills itself as the leading independent facial recognition company for consumer gadgets. Its technology is developed by the company's research team in the Ukraine.

Viewdle is the result of 15 years of research, rooted in work done at The Cybernetics Institute in Kiev, and got its first infusion of investor money -- 2.5 million dollars -- in June 2008.

High-powered players in September pumped $10 million into the Palo Alto, California, startup devoted to crafting ways to let smartphones "see" things the same way people do.

The influx of cash came from Qualcomm, BlackBerry Partners Fund, US electronics retail chain Best Buy, and Anthem Venture Partners, an investment firm that has backed Viewdle from the outset.

Kinect bringing interactive ads to Xbox 360San Francisco (AFP) June 21, 2011 -
Microsoft announced Tuesday it will bring interactive ads to Xbox360 consoles using the voice- and gesture-recognizing capabilities of Kinect controllers.

The US technology titan unveiled "NUads" technology that it heralded as the future of television advertising.

"I believe that the Kinect platform, and NUads, will unlock the incredible potential of interactive TV, and interactive TV advertising," Microsoft advertising business group general manager Mark Kroese said in a blog post.

Microsoft has been beefing up film and television show content at its Xbox Live service that consoles connect with using the Internet.

Kinect controllers allow people to tell a console to post a video ad in a Twitter update or ask it for more information about a product.

Viewers can use waves of hands to share opinions in polls or send material to themselves by email.

"Simply put, NUads break down the barriers between consumers and content on the TV screen," Kroese said.

Early in June, Microsoft added YouTube, voice commands, television shows and more to Xbox 360 with Kinect as the hot-selling videogame console matures into an entertainment center for all.

Microsoft ramped up voice capabilities in Kinect to allow Xbox users not only to give commands to in-game characters but also to speak Bing searches for games, movies, television shows, music and other entertainment content.

Microsoft has sold more than 10 million of the gesture-sensing Kinect accessories for the Xbox 360 worldwide since they hit the market in November.

Kinect uses a 3D camera and motion recognition software to let people play videogames on the Xbox 360 using natural body movements and voice commands instead of hand-held controllers.

Microsoft has expressed a vision of Kinect moving beyond the living room to medical centers, schools and other places where technology to track skeletal movement and recognize voices could be useful.

Virtual natural environments and benefits to healthBirmingham UK (SPX) Jun 01, 2011A new position paper by researchers at the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health and the University of Birmingham has compared the benefits of interaction with actual and virtual natural environments and concluded that the development of accurate simulations are likely to be beneficial to those who cannot interact with nature because of infirmity or other limitations: but virtual ... read more

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